Question about hills

My training plan called for 4 miles on hills for last night’s run. This is part of why I chose this plan, because a lot of the runs called for hills and I’m expecting some nice (nasty?) hills in San Francisco. The problem is that where I live isn’t hilly.

I have my choice to go one way and get two hills that take up the majority of the mileage, like so:

The other way has more hills but they aren’t as tall (not that the other hills are very tall, either):

In a few weeks this won’t be so much of a problem, as my runs will get long enough that I can get to some better hills. What do you think I should do in the meantime?

I think if your plan calls for hill repeats, the first hill is definitely appropriate, so you can practice running up the steady incline. The other hills would be good just for a "hilly" run. Either way, I think you'll still get a great workout in.

I'm no expert with this, but I'd do them both and when mastered, take the 150' climb section at the beginning of #2 and do repeats on it. Then do both routes lots of times, because we all love hills and reading about others doing lots of hills.

Mix it up. Do out-and-backs on each route, alternating them. And don't forget that half the battle on hills is attitude. Fear them and you'll tighten up and hurt. But if you relax and embrace the challenge, you can use them to your advantage. Remember that everyone in the race will have to run the same hills.

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